This article comments on a text by Juliano Moreira, who, in 1905, published a history of aid to the mentally ill in Brazil, where he tells of the founding of the Pedro II Asylum (the first in the country), describes the aid provided in Rio de Janeiro, then capital of Brazil, and in several Brazilian states, and comments on the first Federal Law for the insane, enacted in 1903. This is an important historical document written by one of the most outstanding protagonists of the project for modernizing Brazilian psychiatry during a period that was essential for its institutional consolidation and scientific recognition.